The Astral Spire groaned as leyline vibrations surged up its ancient bones. From the Spire's upper observatory, Lucien watched the aurora shimmer violently across the night sky, a visible rupture in the arcane weave. He had not seen such distortion in decades, and when it came, it was always a harbinger of something terrible.
Moments later, the crystal orb embedded in the Room of Whispers pulsed with deep red light. A report. Lucien descended swiftly, his cloak trailing behind him like liquid ink, silent but urgent. As he entered the chamber, the orb projected an image into the air: a crater, immense and unnatural, ringed with twisting threads of blue and silver energy that crackled like lightning trapped in glass.
The words that accompanied the image chilled him.
**"Black Hollow: Missing."
Not destroyed. Not attacked. Missing.
Black Hollow had once been a vibrant town nestled along the Southern leyline convergence. Home to scholars, mages, artificers, and merchants, it stood as a beacon of progress and peace. Its leyline alignment had been stable, monitored, and fortified with centuries of arcane craftsmanship. For it to vanish—entirely—meant a disruption so severe that even the Spire's ancient wards had staggered.
Lucien inhaled slowly, centering himself.
"Project Simulacrum," he ordered. The walls of the chamber pulsed, responding to his voice. From a pool of mirrored liquid in the center of the room, a copy of Lucien rose—not of flesh, but of starlight and essence, an astral simulacrum linked to his consciousness.
"Seek Black Hollow. Observe. Report."
The simulacrum streaked across the skies of Elarion like a comet of sapphire flame. Hours passed in silence, until it reached the coordinates where Black Hollow should have been.
Instead, it found a wound in the world.
The earth had been scooped out like clay beneath a god's thumb, forming a perfect circular basin nearly a mile wide. There were no buildings, no remnants of stone or bone. Just a barren crater filled with softly glowing air, like a fog made of static.
The center bore a sigil, etched in geometric precision, pulsing faintly with temporal magic. It shimmered in and out of perception, as if struggling to exist in one time.
Lucien, watching through the eyes of his simulacrum, felt the weight of its meaning settle in his chest.
"Chronomancy," he whispered. "The signature is unmistakable."
He hovered over the sigil, extending ethereal threads from the simulacrum's form to taste the resonance. The moment the threads touched the glyph, a wave of distortion struck him like a thunderclap. The vision fractured—past and future twisted into view.
He saw children laughing in the town square. The same square swallowed by unmaking.
He saw guards training, swords clashing. Then, time sped up: buildings dissolved, conversations reversed, then froze mid-sentence.
One image lingered longer than the rest.
A cloaked figure, arms raised over the central platform of Black Hollow, chanting in a language older than stars. Around them, acolytes arranged crystal time-siphons, their surfaces covered in runes not seen since the Age of Collapse.
Lucien pulled himself free from the echo before his mind could splinter. The image of the sigil remained burned in his thoughts. It resembled the emblem of the Timebound Circle.
"Impossible," he murmured. "They were extinguished."
The Timebound Circle—a cult of arcane extremists who served Vaelor Blacktide in the final century before the Arcane Collapse—had sought to unravel the timeline itself, rewriting history to glorify their dread master. They were believed destroyed after Lucien and the allied mages of the Spire had shattered their Sanctum across thirteen simultaneous timelines. The effort had nearly broken him.
And now they were back.
Lucien turned to the memory vault. With a single motion, he summoned the echoes he had pulled from the crater. Ethereal specters filled the room—images and sounds scraped from the static winds.
"You don't understand! We were never meant to know!" "It's not death. It's before death." "He comes from beneath the when."
Voices, half-dissolved by paradox. Fractured statements without clear meaning. But among them, a phrase repeated.
"Unwoven."
A term used by the Timebound Circle to describe those lost between moments—souls trapped in temporal flux, unable to move forward or back. If Black Hollow's population had been Unwoven, it meant they were not dead in the traditional sense. They were lost in time.
Lucien stepped away from the echo, his face unreadable.
"Vaelor isn't content with the present," he said. "He seeks dominion over the past."
The implications were staggering. If the Timebound Circle had restored their temporal engines, the entire history of Elarion was at risk. Cities could be erased before they were born. Allies turned into enemies. The Arcane Collapse might never have occurred—or worse, it could be made permanent.
Lucien summoned a scroll, its contents encoded with arcane threads. He began cross-referencing the glyph from Black Hollow with known Timebound sigils. The match was undeniable. This wasn't a rogue operation or some mimicry. The Circle had reassembled.
His familiars, dispatched to various locations, now returned with fragmented visions. Minor towns experiencing time loops. Villagers aging backwards over days. A forest trapped in an endless autumn.
The leyline maps, updated in real time, showed distortions forming a pattern—converging toward a single point in the north.
"The Nexus Vault," Lucien muttered. "They're heading for the Vault."
The Nexus Vault, buried deep beneath the city of Cael'Maril, was a relic of the first age of magic. It was rumored to house the Threads of Origin—temporal roots of the world itself. If the Timebound Circle reached it, they could rewrite all of creation.
Lucien's eyes burned with renewed resolve. He turned to the Spire.
"We must prepare the Aegis Protocol. Seal the Vault. Mobilize the Covenant."
The Spire thrummed in acknowledgment.
And for the first time in an age, the stars above the Astral Spire dimmed.
The war was no longer coming.
It had already begun.